A small oil study in my sketch book for a larger painting that is getting underway.
"Velvet Marsh" 24x24 oil on canvas. I flipped the road orientation from the study in the previous post. This started - like many of my recent efforts - as an image that came to mind while reading Mary Oliver -"this afternoon in the velvet waters, hundreds of white birds". The waters evolved into a marsh and the birds flew off I guess.
"Velvet Marsh" A small oil study in my sketchbook for a larger 24x24 oil that is almost done. Hopefully It will be finished by the end of the weekend!
For two more weeks…more or less we’ll be showing at Page Waterman. It’s going well so far. The response to the work has been very positive.
ArrowstreetLive is the new website for the architectural firm that I’ve been with for the last 16 years. It’s done “blog style” and features a lot of content from employees that is both company centric as well as farther flung. A few of my recent posts are there, including my recent trip to RISD to take part in Portfolio Review and a bit that I wrote about architecture and painting. Enjoy!
“…all paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract… a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.”
You are invited to the artists’ reception, March 12, from 2:00 - 4:00 at the Dover Public Library. Please come by and say hello. The work will be up for the month of March.
This is another in the 18 x 36 series focusing on beach landscapes. It starts with a very low view point, placing the horizon line at approximately the kids shins to try to catch the essence of the Brewster Flats at low tide.
One on-going series is Vermont barns, structures and landscapes. Culled from visits to the Warhols and Slattery. This is Slattery’s tractor shed. Nice shed! Open doors or open sides of these structures are a lot like the markets in Europe that I’ve painted. There is a suspended volume of shadow in the composition that grounds it, and if there is a window to the light of the landscape beyond then the space of the overall composition is extended that much more.
From the Brewster beach. More horizontal format work. This is 18 x 36 oil on canvas. The sunset is of course always a very tempting subject, especially when we spend a few weeks each year in Brewster. The subtle differences between the horizon, the sky, the water and the muddy sand end up being more significant in the final work.
Eight of my recent paintings are now up in the Arrowstreet Gallery in Somerville. It’s nice to see them in a corporate context. It seems to work.
Happy New Years to all! Tough to complain too much about the Boston weather so far. The blizzard dumped a lot of snow and all but the days have been pretty fabulous ever since. There have been lots of skiers going through the back yard on the way to the town woods…like little visitors to the studio…”they do their thing and I do mine”. Caroline just headed out in fact.
A very non-winter image this one. Gearing up for springs renewed interest in coastal get aways. This is also from one of my dad’s home movies. Taken from my uncle John’s deck over looking the Bass River in West Dennis. Not sure who is in the boat or if it is any relation. I think the date was probably close to 1973 judging by my age in adjacent pieces of footage.
Another from the Home Movies series. This is approximately 1968. That’s my sister Helen in front of one of my Dad’s many Cadillacs. The snow scenes are some how most evocative for me. There is something about the singular graphic quality of a snow-covered landscape and its associations with Christmas, New Years and out door fun that plants it fast in the memory banks.
This is the first finished oil of the “Home Movies” series. This is my Mom and sister Tina in 1951 when she was just learning to walk. Stay tuned for more on this theme…and Happy Holidays to all!
In mid October the Architecture firm that I work at, Arrowstreet, had a party for Bob Slattery, our former CEO, to celebrate his forty years at the firm. The party was held at Bob’s sheep farm in South Royalton, VT. It’s a stunning property - rolling hillsides, woodlands, barn structures, a river. It all combines to create an endlessly picturesque variety of vistas and of course subject matter for paintings, drawings, photographs, videos, you name it… Here’s one oil painting that I completed last week of one of the barn structures.
Caroline recently took my family home movies in video cassette form to Walgreen’s and had them put onto DVD. I decided to look through them a few nights ago and was immediately struck buy the beauty of the images. They were taken by my dad in film form of course. They Started in 1950 at my mom and Dad’s wedding. My mom thinks Tony Forgione was holding the camera. and went through to about the time I was 3 or 4 years old.
I decided to try to select stills to use as potential painting compositions. However when I used print screen the image it captured would at first be intact but when I saved it it would turn to black. Strange. Ultimately I sat in front of the videos on my laptop with my I phone in hand and just clicked away with the camera. I took hundreds of shots. I’m not sure where to go with it all but I think it’s an intriguing beginning of a series of some sort. Here are four that I found interesting.
On my way to work in the morning there is a section of the Charles River on the Newton Needham line that has amazing light on it. The way the trees emerge out of the fog on these cold autumn mornings and seem to hover is awfully ghostly. Nothing there seems to have any weight at all.
Spent the afternoon yesterday back at RISD browsing the Alumni Student Art Sale and peaking into the Nature Lab to see what’s happening. Ed Oates violin assignments were hanging up in the lobby and students were hard at work drawing throughout the Nature Lab. It’s always an inspiring visit!
Caroline and I will have a booth at the next RISD Alumni Art Sale in December!
And later in the day they are starting to take shape. Maybe they are 25% done each? These are just the base colors over which and into which I’ll work high-light and shadow.
Working in the Studio Today on a new series. The subject of these is interiors. They are smaller pieces. 11x14. These pics are of the under paintings and of course of the studio space. This same space is where Caroline teaches art classes for adults and kids. The funny little pedestals are Ikea lap top stands. We have six of them which can be arranged in infinite combinations for class or studio set up.